Sex might be just for fun in the future, one chemist says. (Shutterstock)

(Newser)
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One of the co-inventors of the birth control pill is impregnating the Internet with a new theory: that his own invention will be pretty much obsolete by the year 2050 and that sex will be reserved for recreational, rather than procreational, purposes. In an interview with the Telegraph, Austrian-American chemist Carl Djerassi says that as fertility treatments improve, more people will take advantage of them and save in-bedroom antics for fun only. Predictions from his interview:

Advances in IVF will mean that even people who aren't having fertility problems will give it a whirl, with potential future parents becoming part of a new "mañana generation" that puts off reproduction until they're good and ready.

Delaying parenthood this way may result in healthier babies overall, since people will ostensibly freeze their eggs and sperm at a younger age and then get sterilized.

"Women in their twenties will first choose this approach as insurance, providing them with freedom in the light of professional decisions or the absence of the right partner or the inexorabl[e] ticking of the biological clock," Djerassi says. But what will eventually lure them to IVF pregnancies: more accurate genetic screening.

Although Djerassi doesn't believe a male contraceptive pill is forthcoming (it would take too many years to study the effects on sperm, he says), he thinks our armed forces would be perfect guinea pigs for testing how long frozen sperm can last. "With little difficulty and relatively minor expenditure, tens of thousands of volunteers could collect their own semen to be cryopreserved for many years," he says.

Fighting over abortion will be a distant memory: Unwanted pregnancies just won't happen anymore.

In 2050 we'll be producing babies in hatcheries ala "Brave New World" and "marriage" and "family" will be forgotten relics of the past. People will have robots; they won't need "family." The old cottage industry way of producing and socializing the next generation of consumers, workers, soldiers and taxpayers will be defunct and industrialized instead.

tran_tor

Nov 11, 2014 9:32 AM CST

A vast majority of the planet would never be able to afford or even have access to this technology, not to mention the idea that people actually have a hardcoded desire to have children. Even in the US where the tech is available, the idea that humans will soon become a detached intellect with 100% control of their bodies and basic desires is laughable. The only way this is remotely possible is if the government requires temporary or permanent sterilization, which for some reason I don't think will happen.

bruno937

Nov 11, 2014 6:52 AM CST

soon? how the heck then 110.000.000 Americans (according to CDC) already have some sort of stds then? Anymore recreational we'd be walking around naked, sniffing each others butts.